JAC
Jac fell asleep on the bench outside his old One-Way House, and he woke to an unpleasant jabbing on his forehead. He swatted it away, expecting it to be a pigeon or a seagull, but then Lola grunted, “Did you ask me here to tell me you’re homeless now?”
Jac groaned and sat up. He hadn’t meant to take a nap while he waited for Lola, but he hadn’t slept well last night, dwelling on Charles’s threat, and his argument with Levi had drained him down to empty.
“You look terrible,” Lola told him.
“And didyoucome here just to insult me?”
“I came because you sounded desperate.” She sat beside him on the bench. “But I don’t have forever. I’m meeting a date later.”
Jac furrowed his eyebrows. Lola’s hair, as always, was tangled and unkempt. She’d donned the same pleated men’s clothes she wore every day, in varying shades of beige, as well as his stolen watch. “Lucky them,” he said sarcastically.
“I could leave, Polka Dots.”
Jac admittedly hadn’t called Lola to fight. He needed advice, and though Lola Sanguick was far from a sage, she was a keen listener. So he launched into the story from the beginning, filling in the pieces of what Lola had already heard from the radio and from Enne, all the way through his fight with Levi.
“Of course Levi didn’t give you volts. According to Grace, the Irons are about to go dead broke,” Lola said. Levi had told him as much, but it did little to lessen Jac’s anger.
“It’s not about the volts. It’s about the fact that he can’t see why I want this.”
“Whydoyou want this?”
“Because this is my story. It’s not Levi’s or Enne’s or Vianca’s. It’s mine. But the whole city revolves around them. He can barely sneeze without making the front page.”
“So it’s about your ego,” Lola prodded.
“So what if it is? Don’t I get one?” He squeezed the iron arm of the bench in his fist, hard enough to make it bend.
She smacked him. “Stop destroying property with your toxic masculinity.”
Jac frowned and put his hands in his lap. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t protect Sophia, not from Charles. And I know it’s not just about me. It’s her fight, too. But I don’t think she realizes—”
“If this was also her fight, you’d be talking to her right now, not to me.”
He cleared his throat. “I haven’t seen her since last night. And...you know...”
Lola crinkled her nose. “Gross.”
“I didn’t want to ruin it by being like this.” He’d left his cigarettes in his apartment because he hadn’t wanted Sophia to see him grab them. He hadn’t told her he was going to speak with Levi because he didn’t want her to suspect that he was planning something. It’d barely been twelve hours, and he was already being weak and dishonest and avoiding her, and it would all crumble, just like everything in his life always did. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. These are my problems.”
She smacked him again. “Do you think I came out here thinking we were going to a taffy store? I came out because I knew we would sit here, on this bench, and you would cry to me about your problems and you wouldn’t ask me about mine. But that’s okay, because I want to be here. Because I’m your friend. I want to help you, not hear you apologize to me.”
It hadn’t even occurred to Jac to ask about Lola’s problems. “Thanks. Now I feel like an asshole twice over.”
“It’s not my fault you don’t know how to have a healthy conversation. I’m not trying to make you feel lousy. I’m trying to help you decide how to make yourself feel better.”
Jac narrowed his eyes and begrudgingly continued. “I still stand by what I told Levi. I think Charles needs to be taken down.”Before he has the chance to take us down.
“You told me his deadline isn’t until November.”
“He didn’t seem like the sort of guy who cares much about deadlines.” Jac resisted the urge to squeeze the arm of the bench and for Lola to scold him again. “He wants some sort of brawl, and I refuse to give him that. But I don’t have the resources I’d need to take him down otherwise.”
“What would Sophia say?” Lola asked.
“She’d say that it’s only been one night, and we have months to figure out a new plan.” Jac normally wasn’t the man with the plan—that was Levi. But now Jac was alone in this. “What would you say?”
“I’d say it’s only been one night, and you have months to figure out a new plan.”
